The following are excerpts from a Friday Sermon at Tehran University by former Iranian President and the head of the Iranian Expediency Council, Hashemi Rafsanjani. Channel 1 of the Iranian TV aired this sermon on April 8, 2005
Rafsanjani: The teachings of Jesus do not exist in the Christian world today.
They cannot serve as popes and spread the teachings of Jesus,
and at the same time
disregard the crimes
that America commits
all over the world.
It's true that they opposed
the war in Iraq,
but America's crimes
aren't limited to that.
What America does all over the world
in the name of the war on terrorism,
the way in which it plunders
the resources of peoples
in needy and backwards countries,
its aggression in international organizations,
which belong
to all of the world's peoples,
and the inflammatory propaganda it uses
in order to undermine other countries –
all of these certainly contradict the spirit of the teachings of Jesus. Jesus
compared
the money-grubbing oppressors of his time
to man-eating vipers
and confronted them,
so how can the Pope's
functionaries
remain indifferent when
they see the oppression
committed by the international arrogance?
Therefore, a heavy responsibility
lies on their shoulders.
They should raise a great outcry against America.
They should say
to the Americans:
Through the crimes you commit
you disgrace Jesus,
because you use the names of Jesus and the church to win over many votes in the American public.
Crowd: Death to America
Death to America
Death to America
Death to America
Death to America
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